Sermon 5 Lent, Sunday April 10, 2011

It was a beautiful evening, my friends had all been drinking and partying and having a great time.  For whatever reason I wasn’t in the mood.  I wasn’t interested in shots or chasers or alcohol.  Which was odd, because this was the last night for a year that I would not be carrying the great responsibility of others on my shoulders.  I would return the next afternoon to college students, mostly freshman, wide eyed and completely unsure of themselves or so sure of themselves you wanted to punch them.  So it was unusual for me to not want to be part of the party.

I walked down to the dock on the lake, it was dark and the stars were out in full force.  You know when you go to the wilderness in Minnesota it usually is on a lake or in the midst of trees.  Wilderness in Minnesota is vastly different from the wilderness Jesus experienced.  Grouse, deer, poplar trees, walleye, bass, these are the things I think of when I think of wilderness, these are the things that root me to the Creator.  So in a way, it was not all that unusual that I would be drawn to the lake, to the dock jutting out into that lake.  It was not unusual that the wilderness would draw me out, take me in, be a place of transformation, a place of resurrection for me.

As I lay on that dock, time seemed to slip away, I lay on my back staring at the sky.  The stars seemed to start circling around me and as I lay there I began to feel something uncomfortable in my belly.  It wasn’t indigestion or anything like that, it was much worse.  It was something that tugged not just at my belly, but also at my soul.  It was as if God had stuck God’s finger in my stomach, latching on the to material and immaterial stuff of me and began to twist.  Like God was making a tie dyed t shirt.  As I lay there, and I still, to this day, do not know how long it was, the pain, the knottiness of it increased, but at the same time my body began to fill with warmth, with presence that I had never felt before or since. 

As I lay there, feeling the power of God in my body, or the work of the Spirit in my soul, I was compelled to ask God what my purpose in life was.  I prayed on that dock, on my back, I prayed to God to give me the answers to the questions I was asking.  At that point in my life I was not all that interested in my future, I was not all that interested in vocation.  So it was a surprise to me to hear the questions that came to my lips ,as if the work happening in my body at the time was wringing those questions out of me.  As I prayed those questions the shooting stars began.  As I lifted those questions to God, out of myself, each question came with a magnificent shooting star.  These shooting stars streaked across the sky in brilliant oranges, yellows, reds, purples, blues, all sorts of colors that I had never seen from shooting stars before.  As each one streaked across the sky it ripped a part of me away, I could feel the twisting in my belly as they went, but at the same time it filled me with that warmth, which was soothing, peaceful. 

Finally the twisting, the pain I felt, subsided and only the warmth remained, but that warmth would not stop growing within me, it would not stop building and soon tears were streaking down my face, for no apparent reason it seemed.  I had to fling my hands out over my head, and the only thing I could do when I opened my mouth was scream, bellow really, and then sob and then laugh.  It was a resurrection moment, an Easter moment if you will, when I was made new, directed towards a new way of life.

Resurrection is not what happened to Lazarus in today’s Gospel.  Jesus did not resurrect Lazarus, Jesus resuscitated Lazarus.  Jesus brought Lazarus back to life.  Likewise, maybe I should call my moment above a resuscitated moment, cause in the same way I was not resurrected, but made new, given new life.  John, in the Gospel says very clearly this was not the same thing as would happen to Jesus.  Lazarus emerged from his tomb still covered in the bandages of death.  Jesus would emerge without them.  Lazarus would die again, for real this time, Jesus, after his resurrection would never die.  There are distinct differences in the bringing back to life of Lazarus and Jesus’ resurrection, differences that were important to the writers and early readers of John’s Gospel. 

Marcus Borg in his book “The Heart of Christianity” speaks of resurrection in a metaphorical way that I found quite compelling.  He simply says that resurrection is the dying to the old way in order to live a new way.  He is very intentional about calling it a way, and not life.  As most of you know the early Christians did not actually call themselves Christians, they believed they were followers in “The Way”.  So it was important for them to likewise, maintain that vision for themselves when thinking about what the afterlife held, what would happen to them after they died or were killed.  Borg goes into some detail that I would like to share with you about how the Gospels and Paul’s letters see resurrection and their effects on the readers of those scriptures.

In the synoptic Gospels the path of death and resurrection is “the way” Jesus himself taught.  Matthew and Mark equate following Jesus with taking up your cross.  Borg says that in early Christianity the cross was a stark symbol of death, of execution.  It was not a cute little trinket people wore around their necks.  The cross meant death.  Death was the new way to life.  It is a central theme of the Gospel of Mark.  Death, following Jesus along the path of death is the way to transformation, to resurrection to life.

Paul’s most famous resurrection reference is from the letter to the Galatians, he writes, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”  Paul speaks about an internal transformation, a deep change that is not as visible as Jesus’ own death.  The old Paul is dead and the result of that death is new life, a new Paul has been born, one in whom Christ lives.  The Glory of God is a human being fully alive Tertullian wrote, and this centuries after Paul lived, but it captures this sense of death and dying and resurrection.  For Paul what was most important was dying to our old ways, or what he called “life in Adam” and being reborn in Christ, rising with Christ. 

Borg says, in his book, the Gospel of John sums up its ideas about resurrection in the pericope, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  For the writer of the Gospel of John the way to God is only through dying and rising, death and resurrection.  We can be reborn in God if we accept death, if we accept dying and are raised from our death.  Borg writes, “Rather than being the unique revelation of a way known only in Jesus, Jesus’ life and death are the incarnation of a universal way known in all of the enduring religions.”  Death and resurrection it seems, is the only path to new life in God.

We are constantly searching for new life, for a new way.  How many times have each of us tried to reinvent ourselves, tried to transform our lives?  My bet is many of us can count hundreds of times we have had significant life changes, changes that have literally reoriented our faith, our direction, our lives.  Yes, I said above that Lazarus was not resurrected as Jesus was, or was he?  The Gospel writers were foreshadowing Jesus death and resurrection, they were making a point, but in his own heart, in his own body, Lazarus was resurrected, he was made new, he was given another chance to live a life of hope and love.  We are called to enter the tomb, dead, as Lazarus did, and called out of the tomb in order to be made new, in order to follow a new way. 

That dock, as I think back on it, that dock represented the tomb for me.  As I lay there on my back, I became open to God’s work in me.  The stone was rolled shut, and inside that safe and secure tomb I was transformed.  I was made new, the old me died and a new me was born.  It has happened numerous times since and will happen numerous times to come.  It is a matter of seeing, of remaining open to God’s work in us, to God’s work in the world.  It is a matter of seeing and trusting that God’s love will win the day.  It is God’s love that will make us new, it is in God’s love we will be born to new life.